Breaking News: Changes at the VOICE Newsletter

The regularly scheduled editorial titled "Help, Help, My Kingdom for some
Help" has been rescheduled for July to allow for this important announcement.
This will be the last issue of the VOICE Newsletter... to be available on the 15th
of the month. Starting in July, assuming all goes well with the change over, the
VOICE Newsletter will become publicly available on the 1st of the month. So you
only have to wait 2 weeks for the next issue. :-)

There are two main reasons for this change. First, OS/2
eZine is now publishing regularly again...Hooray. It's great to have such a
great asset to the OS/2 Community back again on a regular schedule. Their general
release date is the 16th of the month. It's just plain silly to have both resources
go public within a day of one-another. Chris Wright, editor of OS/2 eZine, offered
to move his publication date, and I offered to move ours. I think we can do it with
less impact then having Chris make the change.

So after over two years of continuous monthly issues (We skipped one issue back
in November 1997 when we moved to the 15th of the month scheduling), I was left
with a choice. Skip a month or try to produce a new issue in less then half the
time I normally have. To top it off I will be away on vacation for the next week,
so I have even less time to do this. Can I pull it off? I certainly hope so.

The second reason for the change-over is that it will finally allow me to view
the Newsletter statistics for a whole month rather then the current stats which
always cross from one month to the next. Believe it or not, people actually read
this newsletter. I guess you knew that since you are reading it now. But I have
often wondered about it, as I keep hearing that people are abandoning OS/2, and
though VOICE continues to grow, it is still in the hundreds and not thousands of
members. The VOICE Newsletter is an instrument of the VOICE user group, which is
freely available to the entire OS/2 Community. I do slip in the occasional reminder
that people should join VOICE, but we have always tried to be somewhat low-keyed
in that regard.

Fact is if just half the people who read the newsletter every month and who aren't
already members, would join VOICE we'd have the largest OS/2 User Group that I know
of. Why is that? I realize that $25 is not easy to come by for everybody, but it
represents a commitment. That is why the folks that organized VOICE chose to require
a membership fee, as opposed to the free-to-all TeamOS/2. And seriously, when have
you seen any activity at the TeamOS/2 site.
VOICE is not going away, so if you were afraid of wasting money on something that
was about to fold, it hasn't happened in the past three years, and I don't see it
happening in the next. Will OS/2 still be around in three years? Of course it will.
Far too many mission critical applications for big customers require the power and
stability that OS/2 affords. So try Linux or windoze2000 if you must, but don't
throw-out those OS/2 CD's.

So to you who haven't joined, please tell me why. Maybe we can do something to
change your mind. Because it is only with numbers that we can have an impact on
IBM's plans. and though the Death of OS/2 has been mis-reported many times, IBM
is not doing anything at the moment to promote it's use. Email me at editor@os2voice.org.
We need to know how we can serve you, the OS/2 user, better.

VOICE can use your support. If you haven't done so yet, but are ready to do so
now, joining VOICE is certainly easier then trying to subscribe to IBM's
DevCon. (Doesn't it strike you as odd that the only way you can subscribe to
the "tools for ebusiness" developers site is by telephone?) You can join
VOICE online via our BMT Secure order form at https://secure.falcon-net.net/BMT/order0308.html.
If you are outside the US. Mensys has added the VOICE memberships to their online
store - http://shop.mensys.nl/cgi-bin/db2www/mns_art2.d2w/report?artname=VOICESUB.
Please consider joining VOICE now. Every membership helps make us stronger in our
support of the OS/2 community.

On Monday June 5th, we had a Speakup with Sundial Systems. the Sundial topic
was a wrapup of WarpTech2000. If like me, you couldn't be there, and you missed
this speakup, Richard R. Klemmer has a brief Report from
WarpTech 2000. Richard plans a more detailed report on WarpTech 2000 in
the next issue of OS/2 eZine. And Wayne Swanson,
Vice-president of VOICE and all-around bon vivant will have an article on WarpTech
2000 in the July issue of the VOICE Newsletter. In addition there is a transcript
of the Sundial Speak on WarpTech at http://www.os2voice.org/logs/V060600.LOG.html.
Also at the Sundial Speakup Sundial announced the release of Mesa 2 2.3 update.
All those attending had the opportunity to upgrade to 2.3 and purchase Bill Schindler's
new book Down To Earth REXX.for only $30. That was $10 off the current price
on the combined Mesa 2 update/book special.

In June there is a General Meeting scheduled for the 19th at 8PM EDT(00:00GMT).
In July there is a General Meeting scheduled on July 3rd and July 17th, as usual
at 8PM EDT. If you would like to hear from someone in particular or have an idea
for a Speakup event, please submit it to liaison@os2voice.org,
and we will try to schedule something. Also on the VOICE Calendar are weekly Warp
Doctor team meetings every Wednesday at 8PM EDT (00:00GMT). As always, please be
sure to check out the updated VOICE Future events Calendar
in this newsletter or on the VOICE website at <http://www.os2voice.org/calendar.html>
for more details on future VOICE events.

Tom Nadeau is on his editorial pulpit yet again. This month it's all about Better Hardware Means.... Worse Software?. Next up
I have an article on installing and using the IBM Wireless
LAN Kit. This project grew out of my interest in surfing the web while sitting
on my patio outside in the sun. Interest turned into a bona fide success, though
with a lot of perseverance.

Next month (remember we are switching to a July 1st date :-), we will have an
excellent article by Alfredo Fernández Díaz on How to create a
[complete] OS/2 system bootable off a CD-ROM, a review of the HauppaugeWinTV
GO card by Bill Esposito, Chris McGill's My Experience with SBLive Beta Drivers
and also Wayne Swanson's article on WarpTech 2000. Don Eitner also plans to
have a review of XWorkPlace 0.9.3 for his End(User) article.

Just a reminder that we now have a full Newsletter
Master Index page. All the feature sections of the current and previous issues
can now be found on this one page. Additionally, we have added a Java based search
function to this master index page. It will allow you to search all past issues
for a specific word or phrase. So try it out and let us know what you think. If
you have any ideas for improvements let me know at editor@os2voice.org.

That's it for this month. We are always interested in your thoughts and views
on subjects related to OS/2, and would like to see opinion/editorial pieces as well
as hardware/software reviews. To that end, and because of several recent requests,
we have added a Guidelines for Article Submissions to the
VOICE Newsletter.

So who says OS/2 is dead now? We have better display driver support then ever, WinDriver
to help with new device drivers, and now a new version of OS/2. Too bad IBM isn't
announcing this as such. Could they still be afraid of the monopolist in Redmond?